To arrest spike in Corona cases, UT govt requisitions pvt hospitals, setting up more oxygen plants in J-K

By Bunty Mahajan

Jammu: From requisitioning medical facilities of private hospitals to distributing COVID kits among people under home isolation, setting up additional triage centres at hospitals and installation of new oxygen plants, are some of the measures apart from imposition of Corona curfew, taken by UT administration to arrest spike in COVID-19 cases across Jammu and Kashmir.

The UT on Saturday reported 60 Corona related deaths and 4788 new cases. Though Kashmir reported 3259 positive cases, Jammu division had 42 Corona related deaths during the past 24 hours.

With this, there have been a total of 2,672 Corona related deaths in the UT so far including 1139 in Jammu and 1533 in Kashmir division. What has been alarming is that the 390 people have died of Covid-19 and 35,659 tested positive during first eight days of the current month alone.

In view of the current situation, Jammu District Magistrate Anshul Garg on Saturday requisitioned medical facility of three private hospitals up to 50 per cent  sharp of their respective capacity for Covid mitigation efforts.

This, according to District Magistrate, has been done in view of the “sharp spike’’ in the number of active COVID-19 positive cases in Jammu district over the past few days, resulting in corresponding increase in demand of medical facilities for patients requiring immediate medical interventions.

These hospitals include BEE ENN Charitable Hospital at Canal Road. SDDM Hospital at Channi and Medicare near Gandhi Nagar’s Auqaf Market.

The spike has already led to chaos and panic crowding at tertiary care hospitals. To check this, the government has started COVID-19 Triage facility at Jammu’s Chest Diseases Hospital and Government Hospital Gandhi Nagar (Old Block), besides National Institute of Technology Campus at Hazratbal, Srinagar and SKIMS-JVC, Bemina.

These Triage facilities will act as first arrival point for screening of any Covid positive patient intending to get admitted in Government Medical Colleges at Jammu and in Srinagar, besides their associated hopitals at both the places, SKIMS Soura and other identified dedicated COVID hospitals under the Directorate of Health Services at Jammu and in Kashmir.

For COVID positive cases in periphery areas and districts other than Jammu and Srinagar, the triage point shall be the concerned district hospital, besides new Government Medical Colleges in Doda, Kathua, Rajouri, Baramulla and Anantnag. Admission of such patients from these districts to GMC Jammu/Srinagar and SKIMS Soura shall be strictly on referral basis only.

In Samba district, administration in its endeavour to provide better health care facilities and preventive measures, on Saturday launched online yoga classes for prevention and post Covid care & rehabilitation.

Deputy Commissioner, Anuradha Gupta said that yoga is essential for better immunity and mental health especially amid the ragging pandemic.  These classes in collaboration with AYUSH will start daily online from 10 May (Monday) in two sessions, with the first beginning at 7 AM to 7:30 AM for those wanting to improve immunity including asymptomatic Covid patients and the second from 8:00 AM to 8:30 AM for Covid recovered patients. These sessions will be conducted by qualified master trainer by AYUSH dept and shall be based on the common yoga protocol for prevention and post Covid care issued by Ministry of AYUSH, Govt of India.

These have been apart from UT government’s efforts to set up new oxygen plants and increase the number of beds so as to enhance COVID care facilities with oxygen support at hospitals.

The Lt Governor Manoj Sinha at a meeting with senior army officials of both the Northern and Western Commands at Raj Bhawan here asked them to explore the possibility of enhancing the capacity at 100-bedded Covid care facilities to 200 beds with oxygen support.

The senior Army officials apprised the Lt Governor about the efforts put up by the Army in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir to combat the pandemic including Western Command’s 100-bedded Covid care centre at Army Public School Domana in Jammu; 250-bedded Covid hospital in Kashmir’s Rangreth area jointly operationalized by Chinar Corps and Civil Administration.

It was informed that treatment of Covid positive cases is also being done at Military hospitals after the referral of Civil Administration.

To take first hand appraisal of the infrastructure and patient care management in Covid care Hospitals, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha even visited various government run hospitals in Jammu and enquired about number of patients being treated in the hospitals, patients discharged after recovery, availability of oxygen support beds. While inspecting the functionality of Oxygen Generation Plants in the Hospitals, he directed for effective rationalization of available resources to cater to the requirements of the patients.

While in Srinagar, he directed senior doctors, health officials and CMOs to increase additional 1050 oxygen beds in Kashmir division to ensure immediate treatment for the people requiring hospitalization, he was informed in Jammu that the trial run of 2400 LPM capacity Oxygen Generation Plant in GMC Jammu is going on and the same would be made fully functional by May 8 enabling the addition of about 125 Covid dedicated beds in the Government Medical College and Hospital, Jammu.